My exhibition about the river Thames, Skim Sky Blue, is now open at The Art Cabin and runs until May 18th. Details on how to visit are here (it’s all part of Wandsworth Arts Festival Fringe). I’ve been asked by a couple of people who live too far away to come and see it if I’ll post pictures, so here is selection of some of them. The works are mostly woodcuts with chine collé, and some with additional collage added after printing. I used all sorts of materials for this, from old maps to prepared sheets using both oil and watercolour paint. I had a lovely discussion with Japanese visitor who came into the gallery about the particular shade of deep, clotted blood-red that you can see in the circle on the ‘eels in a tyre’ picture – apparently this is a colour of deep significance in Japan.

Here’s my exhibition statement: read to the bottom to find out how it got its name…

“Skim Sky Blue is inspired in part by woodcut artist Robert Gibbings’ 1940 book ‘Sweet Thames Run Softly’, in which the author built his own boat then paddled down the river Thames from Lechlade in Gloucestershire all the way into central London, sketching and observing along the way. The beautiful woodcuts in the book celebrate the small details of river life, from the curl of a leaf to the dart of a dragonfly.

“Building on a lifetime’s connection with the river Thames, illustrator Jane Porter has explored every mile of the river, from walking to its source under a pile of stones in a buttercup-filled Gloucestershire meadow to the silvery sculpture of the Thames Barrier and the tidal mudflats to its east. She has swum some sections, and has rowed in a traditional Thames skiff from Lechlade 120 miles back to Teddington, as well as skiffing past central London’s landmarks in the Great River Race. She has even built her own coracle and paddled it on the Wandle and a quiet backwater of the Thames.

“The woodcuts in this exhibition tell stories about different sections of the river – the quirky Easter Island-inspired topiary patrolled by hens at Radcot Lock, the cormorants proudly occupying their tree at Stephens Eyot near Kingston, the abandoned structure out past the oystercatchers near Erith, scented by the sewage works.

As a volunteer for both Thames 21 and the Wandle Trust, Jane is involved in monitoring the health of the Thames and has been hauling tyres and other rubbish out of the river Wandle for ten years – eels are a regular sight in this Thames tributary and have an astonishingly tight grip as you pick them up to return them to the water.

The woodcut medium gives the work a very tactile quality: the gloss of the oil-based inks and the slight embossing from the force of the press – even the slight flaws where the wood has splintered – are a refreshing antidote to digitally created or printed pieces. Jane has used chine collé to give graphic highlights and splashes of colour or texture to the prints – using for collage pre-prepared watercolour washes, some even created with mud from the Thames itself.

The exhibition’s title, ‘Skim Sky Blue’ is taken from Charles Dickens – it’s how he described a glass of Thames water when offered one in 1850 on a visit to the Kew Bridge Pumping Station.”

My prints are gradually taking shape for the Thames-themed exhibition I’m holding next month, Skim Sky Blue. I had an experimental day at London Print Studio last week, printing some woodcuts I’d made on a variety of different collaged backgrounds, and trying them out in different combinations and on different types of paper. It was a useful day, and it’s given me lots of ideas on how to progress. One problem I have is that (through spending too much time on the river hauling oars in a skiff) my arms are a bit too strong and I can’t seem to help putting a bit too much pressure on as I tighten the handle on the Beever Press – with the result that everything comes out heavily embossed (you can see what I mean in the picture below, at the right, which shows the back of the paper). I do quite like this effect, but I’m not sure it’s right for what I’m trying to do so for the next session I’ll need to ease off a bit.

As an admirer of classic woodcut artists like Thomas Bewick and Robert Gibbings, I have wanted to try my hand at the medium for a while – and I got the chance on Saturday at a workshop at the London Print Studio run by printmaker Jonathan Ashworth.

I made two blocks, based on photos of reeds and marginals I took last summer on the upper Thames, intending to layer them – though when it came to printing they seemed to work better separately. I tried all sorts of colour combinations and paper types, printing a dark background with a stencil moon for some and for others cutting a fluorescent circle and sticking it to the paper as a background. I’ve done lino-printing before at home, using the back of a spoon to apply the pressure for the print, but using a proper press is so much better – I tightened up the handle quite hard on a few and ended up with a bit of embossing which I like.

My original plan was to use the prints as collage materials for my upcoming exhibition, Skim Sky Blue, but I’m now planning to make a lot more blocks (using lino this time), book some studio time at the LPS, and produce some Thames-inspired slightly abstract prints that way.

Jonathan showed us a DVD during the lunch break about contemporary woodcut print-makers, and I particularly liked the collage-y abstract approach of Peter Lawrence. An inspiring day all round – thanks Jonathan and LPS.